


Scattered Across the Sands

by dragonofeternal



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aged-Up Character, Drug Addiction, M/M, Non-Sgrub AU, Violence, hand trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 13:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofeternal/pseuds/dragonofeternal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two sweeps after losing contact with Gamzee, Karkat tracks him down in a seedy bazaar to try and find out what's happened to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scattered Across the Sands

The air in the bazaar was thick with rich smells- freshly baked grub loaf, spices imported from the farthest reaches of the Condescension's great kingdom, the smell of hundreds of bodies pressed into a tiny, winding set of streets, and the wash of filth and despair that was hidden under the exotic perfumes of the rich. Karkat Vantas pulled up the heavy cloth mask attached to his hood. It was meant for filtering out sand in the most far-flung, god-forsaken desert planets, but he found it worked quite nicely for filtering out the overpowering stench of the marketplace.

What choice did he have though? He was running out of places to look.

Karkat had lost contact with Gamzee about two sweeps ago, and hadn't seen the stupid asshat of a clown in three: not since Karkat had been drafted into the Alternian military. The career path didn't sit well with him, and when he'd gone on the run, his communications with all his friends had gone dead. He'd managed to get back with the important ones... except for Gamzee. His supposed moirail... matesprit.... thing. It was complicated.

He spotted a thuggish looking band of threshecutioners sauntering his way and paused to look at a sign, his eyes drifting over the words without really even seeing them. Blend with the crowd. Become the every man. They passed by, and Karkat released the breath he'd been holding. He wasn't well known in this part of the Empire, but he wasn't taking any chances about being found out here, when he had things to do and people to see. The Condesce did not look kindly upon deserters.

The man running the stand, a stout brown blood with a chipped horn, noticed Karkat's apparent interest in his wares and gave him a toothy smile.

“You see anything you like?”

“I'm not really-” Karkat tried to say.

“Here, I give you special price for special customer,” the salesman offered Karkat a wink and pushed a heavy necklace his way. “Three hundred ceagers, this necklace. For you? I do one-fifty. Fine jewels from depths of space. Well-traveled man like you appreciate that, yes?” Karkat opened his mouth to protest, but the man was like a broken faucet, spouting his insipid drivel without end, as though he wanted to fucking drown Karkat in his noxious breath and shitty sales pitch.

“Good god, would you just shut up?” Karkat finally snapped, slamming his fist down on the stand. “Any idiot with even the vaguest approximation of eyes in his skull could clearly see that this is all cheap, chintzy, over-priced crap you dug out of a dumpster in some back-water dive of a motel, left behind by low-life floozies who'll be the palest peach for a fucking ceager and a meal. And then you go and sell that shit not just back to them, but back to fucking imbeciles who can't tell a emerald from a jade blood's fucking scabs! Fuck you! I don't want your shit, and I never did!”

The man stared, slack-jawed, and Karkat turned on his heel to try desperately to vanish back into the crowd. Nothing like screaming at locals like an immature little wriggler to keep low profile. Nope, not at all. Past Karkat was a bulge-blistering moron. The crowd parted whenever he came near, so he slipped into a back alleyway to let the masses forget about him. He stepped over a woman who was collapsed in her own filth before pausing in front of a group on indigo bloods shooting dice.

“Hey,” Karkat barked, catching their attention. “I've got a question.”

The largest one, a guy with massive hands that look like they could snap Karkat's forearm like a chicken bone, quirked a bushy eyebrow at Karkat's statement. “That so.”

“I need to know where the Blind Barkbeast is. I'm looking for a troll who tends to hang out around there.”

A massive hand went up to scratch the indigo blood's chin as he considered Karkat's request. “This Imperial business?” he said, eying the faded, ripped insignia that still desperately clung to the outside of Karkat's cloak like a scarlet letter.  
“No,” Karkat replied flatly.

“Then personal.” Karkat nodded. “That's good. Wouldn't want dogs like you sniffing around where they don't belong...” The other trolls laughed with him, and Karkat offered him a disinterested little chuckle with a halfhearted smile. Rule number one of dealing with indigo bloods: Always laugh at their jokes, even if they are so terrible they hardly count as such. “Who you looking for.”

“Another indigo like you. Makara, Gamzee. Probably a real lanky motherfucker. Last I saw of him he was a sopor-head.”

His clipped comments were met with chuckles and shared looks that Karkat didn't like in the least. “You a friend of Makara's then?”

Karkat did his best to hide his wince. “Something like that.”

“Have a seat.” The indigo blood indicated the space next to him. It wasn't a request. Karkat sunk down beside him, and the indigo blood pulled him close. “We're friends of Makara's too, see? And, friend-to-friend, we'd like to invite you to play a game with us.” He passed Karkat the dice.

“I don't gamble.”

“Well, you see, your shithead friend Makara does.” Karkat tried not to wince away from the highblood's fetid breath. “He's up for anything so long as he can get his fix.”

“How fucking hard can it be to find sopor? Or is that a goddamned 'far-flung' luxury here now?” Karkat squirmed out of the highblood's grip and tried to stand. They pushed him back down, laughing.

“Makara's a real connoisseur nowadays. He's got his fingers in all the fanciest pies. Can't keep his grubby paws off the shit.”

A nasally, horse-faced indigo blood to Karkat's left laughed, elbowing him. “That's a light way of puttin' it, Yurich. More like he's a strung-out nasty sonuvabitch what would do anything to get all hooked up in his vice.”

The highblood with the massive hands, Yurich, rolled his eyes. “Did anyone ask your opinion?” The nasally guy fell silent. Yurich smiled back at Karkat and pressed the dice back into his hand. “You see, our mutual buddy has fallen on some hard times. Hard to maintain such a genteel lifestyle with such diverse interests. We were wondering if a pal like you could help square away some of our good buddy's debt with us.”

Karkat hated how dry his throat was starting to feel. He licked his lips. “You want me to shoot dice with you so you can take all my fucking money to get back what Gamzee owes you.”

“Something like that.”

“Jokes on you nook sniffers. I don't have any money on me. None to my name either. Sorry.”

They all exchanged glances, coming to some silent agreement. Yurich patted his hand. “Go ahead and roll anyway. If you win, we'll consider it all water under the bridge.”

“And if I lose?”

Yurich laughed.

Karkat weighed the dice in his hand. They were nice-- obviously something made back on Alternia, or at least in a colony that wasn't quite so shitty as this one. They were also obviously weighted. “I told you before that I don't gamble.”

“Then don't think of it as gambling,” Yurich hissed in his ear.

This hardly qualified as gambling in Karkat's mind, but what choice did he have? Fight them all off? They were huge. Maybe he'd get lucky. But probably not.

“Fine.”

The dice rattled across the packed dirt to rest on snake eyes. An insanely lucky roll. Karkat felt his heart jump up into his throat.

“Ha!” Karkat jumped up to his feet, pointing. “There! I beat you at your stupid wriggler's game! You gave me loaded dice like a bunch of two-sweep old cowards afraid of losing to a newborn grub, and I still fucking won! Now just tell me where to find the Blind Barkbeast so I can find Gamzee and never see your grody clown faces-”

Karkat sucked in a sharp breath as Yurich's fist collided with his gut. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This was where it all ended: carved up in a back alley by a pack of shit-for-brains indigos because his stupid shitty clown couldn't keep his shit together for two sweeps and past Karkat couldn't keep from gloating over a lucky throw of the dice. He'd never felt more angry at Gamzee or at himself than he did in that moment.

He staggered backwards and yanked out his sickles, but his grip was loose, and they were easily knocked away, and he was struck again hard enough to make him gasp and double over, falling to his knees. One of the indigo bloods stamped on his back, and he smacked against the dirt.

Karkat stretched his fingers out, desperately trying to reach his sickle. “Come on... come on....”

Yurich stomped on the outstretched hand, and Karkat hissed in pain as he heard the bones crack under the heel of the boot. They laughed. Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut? Why couldn't he have gone into some other shitty alley, maybe one with a couple sopor fiends drooling on themselves instead of a gaggle of indigos who had a vendetta against his stupid friend. Karkat closed his eyes and tried to stop hating himself for a second to think of a way out of this, which was a little hard considering the fact that he was in the process of being turned into a battered sack of meat and bones.

And then something went honk.

Karkat winced and stuck out his other arm to grab his sickle, practically pivoting around his pinned hand. There was no way he was going to look like an idiot if Gamzee really was coming his way.

A knife flew through the air and struck Yurich in the eye. He staggered back, howling in pain, and Karkat scrambled back to his feet now that his hand was free and his assailants were distracted. He twisted on Yurich and struck him hard in his throat, sending a gush of indigo blood everywhere. The massive highblood cried out- a horrible, gurgling sound- and fell to his knees. His cronies launched against Karkat with their clubs and fists and knives at the ready.

Then another was hit over the head with a stupid shitty juggling pin.

Karkat felt the vaguest approximation a smile grace his face. “Hey, Gamzee.”

Gamzee bared his teeth and honked, stunning another foe with a strike from his pin. Karkat followed it up by tackling the guy to the ground and hacking at his face until he stopped screaming and struggling. Together they were a deadly, efficient machine, and the off-guard, overconfident dice shooters were no match.

The woman Karkat had passed at the mouth of the alley stirred at the disruption, stared at them blankly for a moment, then vomited on herself and passed out again. Karkat laughed darkly at that as he slit the last guy's throat.

“Need a hand?” Karkat looked up at Gamzee and his outstretched hand. He took it gratefully and pulled himself up.

Gamzee and Karkat stared at one another, both out of breath and still on pins from the fight. His stupid clown looked different now: older, sure, but leaner, too. Hard and sharp like a fucking knife. There was a set of three scars running over the bridge of his nose, and his shirt was tattered, the sign barely legible.

Karkat offered him a weak wince of a smile. “The fuck have you been for the last two sweeps?” Gamzee didn't say anything in reply, just stared at Karkat with those indigo eyes of his. Indigo. Fuck they were grown up now, huh? “You sure let yourself go to hell. Seriously, do you need me to hold your hand in every little thing?”

“Where the motherfuck have you been?” Gamzee said quietly, his eyes narrowing.

Karkat felt an angry flush come to his cheeks. “Huh, well let's see- I got drafted into the fucking military, went AWOL because they found out about my blood, went on a shitty-ass spiritual journey through the mountains of who even gives a fuck, decided it's my noble purpose in life to screw up everything I touch, went home, tried to find a couple of friends who were still, you know, alive and didn't care about the fact that I'm a fucking treasonous sack of crap with no higher purpose in life other than to run around with my tail between my legs and hope the government doesn't find and cull me. Where the motherfuck have you been, Gamzee? Because I've been looking for you for perigrees but, shock and awe, not one of our friends knew where the fuck you were! So how about it, Gamzee? What great shit have you been up to while I was doing my best not to die?” Gamzee slowly lifted a hand and touched Karkat's face, wiping away the blood from under his nose. Karkat swallowed. “Well?”

Gamzee gestured to himself. “What's it look like I been doin'?”

“Being a stupid shitty clown.”

Gamzee laughed bitterly. “Ain't much of a clown anymore.”

“You'll always be a stupid shitty clown.” Karkat reached up and tried to smudge Gamzee's lingering makeup back into a smile. “Besides, I'm here now, and it's gonna be okay.” He got up on tip-toe and kissed Gamzee's forehead. “Let's just go.”

Gamzee offered him a weak little smile and a honk. “You got it, best friend.”


End file.
